


Shatter Me

by Krasimer



Series: Don't Take My Sunshine Away [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesiac Soldier: 76, Anger Management, Angst and Feels, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gabriel Being Gabriel, Gabriel Has Issues, Healing, Hints of PTSD and other things, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Relationship Discussions, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To have that memory and be able to see that face in his mind, the sudden rush of joy that had shoved everything else out of the way...</p><p>It was going to break him, he knew it.</p><p>76 seemed to be thinking over the story, eyes focused on a spot somewhere on the floor while Gabriel had zoned out into his own memories. When they both remembered the present, pulled themselves back into it, Gabriel smiled at him. </p><p>"We were friends, weren't we?"</p><p>Going to kill him, this man was. He'd always known Jack Morrison would be the death of him, he'd just been wrong about the hows and when.</p><p>"Yeah," he managed to answer around the sudden constriction in his throat. "We were."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter Me

They were spending time together.

Because of Gabriel not being allowed out on missions, he was spending nearly all his time in the base. Due to Gabriel's repeated complaints and constant protests, Soldier: 76 had been pulled from active duty. When Mercy had supported the idea and Reinhardt had spoken up in favor of it as well, Winston had merely sighed and allowed the change.

The change had led to them being here, together.

Gabriel set down his tablet, watching as 76 pulled the components of one of his smaller guns apart, setting each piece in a specific place before moving on to the next one. His hands were steady, for the most part, but Gabriel frowned. "Do you ever shut off?" he asked, approaching slowly. The last time he had approached at a normal pace when the man had been going through these motions had ended with them locked together. Neither of them were good at disengaging from a threat, it seemed, not even after all this time.

"Meaning?" 76 didn't even look up, allowing the approach. Enough warning given, Gabriel was left to guess. 

"You're always cleaning a gun and putting it back together, you're always in some sort of uniform, it's like-" he stopped, blinking owlishly for a moment before his jaw dropped. "You're acting like you're on a mission, no matter where you are."

"...Habit."

With a snort and a shake of his head, Gabriel sighed. "Yeah, always is with you. Here, try something new. Take off the jacket."

He had been able to convince the man to go without his visor and mask more days than not, this was the next step. When it looked like he was just going to ignore him, Gabriel sighed again, making an impatient grabbing motion with his hand. "C'mon old man, release the jacket."

"You're the same age as me."

"Actually, I'm a year older. Give me the fucking jacket."

Slowly, faded blue eyes watching him carefully, 76 set down his dismantled weapon, pulling the zipper down like he was at gunpoint. Nodding when he went to shrug it off, Gabriel watched as he pulled his arms out of the sleeves, doing his best to ignore the part of his brain that was linking the motion to memories 76 didn't have anymore. When it was finally off, 76 held it in his hands for a moment, tracing over the number.

"It's all I have," he muttered, his eyes unfocusing as he looked at it. 

"I know," Gabriel took it carefully, doing his best to fold it neatly before setting it on the table near where he had been sitting. "And it'll be okay, it's right there if you feel like you need it again. If you get cold, do me a favor and just grab a blanket, okay?" he waited until there was a nod in response, then went back to stand in front of him. Once he was allowed back into the personal space of 76, he started carefully picking up pieces of the pulled apart firearm. 

"You know what you're doing."

"I was a soldier too," Gabriel answered the unasked question. "It's how we met, actually."

"...How old were we?"

He was being stared at, light blue eyes seeming to pierce through his very core. As if by looking into him 76 would learn the truth. He smiled, settling himself on the seat next to him. "I was all of twenty-three years old, you were the uppity brat who'd just come out of basic training."

"Uppity?"

With a bit of laughter, Gabriel nodded, a small smirk on his lips. Outside of Reaper's grasp and strict uniform, he was growing back his facial hair, the beard coming in nicely. Despite a patchy start, his mustache was doing the same. "We didn't get along at first, drove each other un poco loco...Until one night, during a training drill, our commander got fed up with both of us and put us on cleaning duty."

He could almost see something like a smile tugging at 76's mouth. "What happened?"

"We got angry, we yelled at each other for a bit, and then...Well, some stuff changed. We were a lot nicer to each other after that, and it was hard for them to separate us out for missions. We started going on them together."

The night they had gotten in trouble had been the first night that he'd been close enough to realize how pretty the stupid white boy was. 'Sol de Oro' had popped up as a nickname around that time. His hair had been the sort of blonde he'd only ever seen in movies and his fingers had itched to either throw a punch or bury themselves in it.

Jack Morrison had been every sort of dream rolled into one person and given the cockiest fucking attitude possible.

Gabriel had often wondered if the attitude was the price he had to pay. The hard shell he had to figure out how to open to get access to the softness inside. He didn't remember falling in love with Jack, the very words were wrong for what had happened. 'Falling' implied that there had been some sort of instant realization, a moment of clarity and then the world made sense.

It had been anything but, he'd spent nearly two months hoarding their time together, their precious moments in the dark, before the words had slipped out one night. At the time he'd nearly shot himself for his stupidity, clamping a hand over his mouth while Jack had looked at him with wide eyes and an open jaw.

To have that memory and be able to see that face in his mind, the sudden rush of joy that had shoved everything else out of the way...

It was going to break him, he knew it.

76 seemed to be thinking over the story, eyes focused on a spot somewhere on the floor while Gabriel had zoned out into his own memories. When they both remembered the present, pulled themselves back into it, Gabriel smiled at him. 

"We were friends, weren't we?"

Going to kill him, this man was. He'd always known Jack Morrison would be the death of him, he'd just been wrong about the hows and when.

"Yeah," he managed to answer around the sudden constriction in his throat. "We were."

For a moment it seemed like that would be the end of it, the emotion-baring talk would have 76 running away again while he tried to puzzle everything out and piece it together in his mind. Gabriel was prepared for it to happen, could even see the man getting ready to stand. 

Instead what he got was 76 sliding off of his seat to his knees in front of Gabriel, reaching up to put a hand on either side of his face. Those blue eyes, so familiar and empty of recognition, studied his features, tracing over the line of his nose and the curve of his lips. "Somewhere," his voice was rougher than before, his hands trembling slightly. "Somewhere in my mind, there you are. I can tell, I know you're in there somewhere."

"How do you know?"

"I always know when it's you approaching, even if sometimes you move too quietly for me to know exactly where you are. I _know_ it's you, I just recognize your approach. My mind wants to react to it but I don't know how-" he broke his own sentence off with a growl, his upper lip curling back, cut through by one of the two scars across his face. "There's something there and I can't figure it out!"

His thumbs were pressed against the apples of Gabriel's cheeks, moving in slow motions meant to soothe. The rest of his fingers were tucked up into the short hair that was just begining to curl again now that it was allowed to grow. They were moving too, small circles against his scalp, and it made him want to close his eyes and make the embarrassing noise it was always able to draw from him.

It'd been one of the ways Jack had always managed to calm him down after some nightmare or other had dragged him from sleep.

"The last time we saw each other," Gabriel cleared his throat. The man needed to know before he fell back on old habits he barely even knew anything about. "We fought. There was the explosion and I was being a stupid asshole who didn't know when to back down."

If he wanted to have this man in his life in any way, he needed to be honest with him. 

And hey, if the truth brought back his memories and ended with Gabriel getting hit with all of the considerable strength in the man's body, at least he would remember.

"We fought?"

"About a lot of stuff," Gabriel licked his lips nervously, could feel his eyes changing as he thought about their shared history. "I'm the one who set the explosion in the base. I'm the reason you're like this," he pulled back from his hands, ignored the part of his mind that was screaming at him to stay where he was and shut up. "It's all my fault."

"...You-" 76 sat back on his heels, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. "Why."

Monosyllabic and angry looking.

Back into the Soldier: 76 persona again. Shit.

"You were given a job that I wanted at the time," Gabriel jammed his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids, rubbing vigorously. What he really wanted right now was to go back in time and smack his younger self upside the head until he calmed the fuck down and stopped being an incendiary little shit. "I don't even fucking know why I was angry anymore. You'd tried to turn down the job several times and they'd responded by threatening to give you a dishonorable discharge. I knew that, I _knew that_ , and I still made-"

"Made what?"

Gabriel's hand was pulled away from his face, the thick material of 76's glove squeezing tightly around his arm. He almost thought to regret his sweatshirt choice, having left his thicker jacket in his room. "Made the biggest fucking mistake in my life. I was trying to get even with them, knew something was wrong in how they were doing things, and I...I just..."

"You just _what_."

Something was wrong.

He could feel the heavy churn of anxiety in his stomach and something was wrong. They were sitting in the common area and he had been clear headed enough to think of this place as safe they were going to die because he'd made a mistake _again_ , fuck.

"How quickly can you get your gun reassembled?" Gabriel made his voice as quiet as he could, not moving his lips as he spoke. 

76's eyes flashed dangerously but he kept his eyes trained on Gabriel's face despite the quick flicker off to the side. "About as quickly as you can get across the room to that desk and grab the spare one kept there," he responded in the same way.

"Good," Gabriel swallowed nervously. "Because I think we might be about to have some company."

They held their positions for a moment before Gabriel was practically diving across the room and grabbing for the drawer he knew contained the weapon he was looking for, dropping behind the solid shape of the desk as a single bullet zipped through the air where his head had been.

One bullet.

Fuck, he knew who had been sent. If they were lucky she'd only been sent with a few handlers, a single team at most. Too many more and they'd be swarmed.

Across the room he could see 76, his shoulders braced against the back of the couch, his reassembled gun in his hands as he loaded the cartridge of ammo into it. He nodded at Gabriel, pulling his earpiece from the pocket of his retrieved jacket and tapping into the commlink. 

They sat there for a moment, everything still and quiet. 

He knew Widowmaker's habits, knew she would be beyond angry now that she had missed her target. For the first time in dealing with her, his head was clear of the emotional stranglehold that Talon'd had over him, allowing him to view it with open thoughts. 

Who was left in the base?

Reinhardt and Tracer had gone off on a mission together, Winston was off...Somewhere. Mercy had gone off on a mission with McCree and the Shimadas and Pharah and the omnic, escourting something for someone who had paid a good chunk of money. Symmetra was at a conference.

If he remembered right, D.Va was off doing some celebrity thing and had taken Zarya and Mei with her.

Torbjorn and Lucío were left.

As if summoned by his thoughts the young Brazilian man's voice shouted out over the comm, a little unsteady in what seemed to be panic. "Yo, a little help here? Got someone attacking!"

Shit, they'd sent more than one team of handlers, hadn't they?

"Go," Gabriel waved 76 off. "You know him better than I do, he needs help. From what I know, he's not an offensive fighter and he'll need the backup more than I will."

"You'll be left here alone."

"Yeah and I can deal with that. We don't need the one healer left in the base to be knocked out and unable to fix himself," Gabriel peeked up over the edge of the desk, looking out the window. From his vantage point all he could see was the roof across from them. "I'll cover you, just go!"

76 hesitated before rushing off, his steps quieter than they had any reason to be.

As the other man ran off, Gabriel flipped the desk up, a nice big distracting movement for Widowmaker to focus on. It probably wouldn't work, but that was why he had a gun. If she shot, he could figure out her location and shoot back. The nanites in his blood squirmed as he waited, his chest heaving as he tried to calm himself.

" _Mort aimes_ , 'ow sweet,"

The words were all the warning he got before the butt of a rifle came down on his head, sending him into darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Heheh...
> 
>  
> 
> Tell me what you think? Because I have been waiting to get to this part. I really just want to hear from you.  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> ....Please don't kill me.


End file.
